titution _intended_ to sanction
slavery, is, in reality, equivalent to asserting that the _necessary_
meaning, the _unavoidable_ import of the _words alone_ of the
constitution, come fully up to the point of a clear, definite, distinct,
express, explicit, unequivocal, necessary and peremptory sanction of the
specific thing, _human slavery, property in man_. If the _necessary_
import of its _words alone_ do but fall an iota short of this point, the
instrument gives, and, legally speaking, intended to give no legal
sanction to slavery. Now, who can, in good faith, say that the _words
alone_ of the constitution come up to this point? No one, who knows any
thing of law, and the meaning of words. Not even the name of the thing,
alleged to be sanctioned, is given. The constitution itself contains no
designation, description, or necessary admission of the existence of
such a thing as slavery, servitude, or the right of property in man. We
are obliged to go out of the instrument, and grope among the records of
oppression, lawlessness and crime--records unmentioned, and of course
unsanctioned by the constitution--to _find_ the thing, to which it is
said that the words of the constitution apply. And when we have found
this thing, which the constitution dare not name, we find that the
constitution has sanctioned it, (if at all,) only by enigmatical words,
by unnecessary implication and inference, by inuendo and double
entendre, and under a name that entirely fails of describing the thing.
Every body must admit that the constitution itself contains no language,
from which _alone_ any court, that were either strangers to the prior
existence of slavery, or that did not assume its prior existence to be
legal, could legally decide that the constitution sanctioned it. And
this is the true test for determining whether the constitution does, or
does not, sanction slavery, viz: whether a court of law, strangers to
the prior existence of slavery, or not assuming its prior existence to
be legal--looking only at the naked language of the instrument--could,
consistently with legal rules, judicially determine that it sanctioned
slavery. Every lawyer, who at all deserves that name, knows that the
claim for slavery could stand no such test. The fact is palpable, that
the constitution contains no such legal sanction; that it is only by
unnecessary implication and inference, by inuendo and double-entendre,
by the aid of exterior evidence, the assumpt